The manor breathed differently that night.
No footsteps. No Cassian. No blood-stained silks or whimpering in the dark.
Just firelight. A table set with untouched wine. And Valen, waiting again but not the same way as before.
Elias arrived later than usual. Not by accident. He was testing something. And Valen let him.
When he finally stepped into the room, he carried no satchel. No notebook. Just himself, damp at the cuffs from the mist outside, his shirt clinging faintly from the fog. He said nothing as he approached the armchair across from Valen and sat without being told.
Valen studied him in silence.
"You didn't bring your books" he noted.
Elias's reply was soft, almost too honest. "Didn't feel like studying tonight."
Something stirred at that. A tremor beneath the surface.
They sat like that for a while. Two figures separated by old stone and older shadows.
Then Elias broke the quiet.
"You said I could ask a question each night."
Valen nodded once. "You may."
Elias didn't ask it right away. He swirled the wine in his glass first, watching the ripples. When he finally spoke, it wasn't the kind of question Valen expected.
"Were you in love? Before?"
Valen didn't move. Not for a long moment.
He could have lied. Most would have. Most did. But the question wasn't about curiosity. It was about vulnerability. Elias had offered his, cloaked in sarcasm the night before.
Now he was asking Valen to show him what lay beneath all that velvet and venom.
"Yes" Valen said finally. Quietly. "Once."
Elias's gaze lifted. He didn't press. Didn't ask for a name or a year or a tragic ending.
He just said "That's why it haunts you. Not the blood. Not the centuries. The memory of what it felt like."
Valen's mouth curved slightly, not into a smile into something smaller. Sadder.
"Do you think that's why I keep people like Cassian close?" he asked. "To recreate it?"
Elias shook his head. "No. I think you keep them close so you can prove to yourself it's gone."
Silence again.
But this time, it wasn't heavy. It was... honest.
Valen stood, not in command, but consideration. He walked to the hearth and rested one hand against the mantle, looking into the flames.
"You make it harder to remain distant" he said. "You do that deliberately?"
Elias looked up at him. "No. But I don't try to stop it either."
Valen turned to face him.
There was no hunger in his eyes tonight. Only weight. Only centuries of restraint brushing up against something he hadn't expected: connection.
"I fear what I would become if I let you mean something" Valen said.
Elias didn't flinch.
"Then you already have."
Valen crossed the room slowly, not like a predator now but like a man struggling with the unfamiliar feeling of wanting something he could not control. He stopped beside Elias's chair.
Not touching him. Not towering.
Just being there.
"You haven't asked your question yet" Valen said.
Elias's voice was low, steady.
"If I stay all seven nights... and I say yes at the end..., would it mean something this time?"
Valen looked at him like he hadn't looked at anyone in centuries.
"Yes."
There it was. No games. No performance. Just truth.
And for the first time, neither of them reached for more.
They simply remained two men on opposite ends of eternity, finding something like gravity between them.
Valen felt him enter the way he always did like the air forgot how to breathe.
But tonight, Elias didn't wait by the door. He didn't challenge. Didn't speak.
He simply walked up to Valen where he stood in the dim drawing room, shadows brushing across his features like reverence.
No Cassian. No distractions. Just the two of them. And the silence between them pulsed like a wound.
Elias didn't sit.
He stood too close.
Close enough that Valen could see the thrum of blood at his throat. Could smell the subtle blend of paper, rain, and something salt-sharp want held on a leash.
"Not asking me your question tonight?" Valen asked, voice low.
"I already did" Elias said.
Valen narrowed his gaze. "And what answer did you get?"
Elias didn't flinch. "One I'm not sure I believe yet."
Then: a beat. Taut. Heavy.
"I want to see what it looks like when you mean it" Elias said softly. "When it's not performance."
Valen's lips parted, the breath he didn't need catching anyway.
"And if I show you?" he asked.
Elias's throat bobbed with the weight of his reply. "Then I'll stop pretending I'm not already yours."
Silence.
A reckoning.
Valen stepped forward.
No flourish. No predator's game.
His fingers brushed Elias's jaw with aching care. His other hand settled at the base of Elias's spine, guiding him backward not with force, but promise. The sofa greeted them like a witness.
Valen sat first.
Then pulled Elias onto his lap.
Straddling.
Facing.
Heartbeats between them now.
"You want to feel the difference?" Valen murmured. "Between dominance for pleasure… and this?"
Elias nodded. Barely.
Valen's mouth ghosted along his jaw, to his ear, his voice a thread of velvet and flame.
"Then don't move. Don't speak. Just… let me."
And Elias did.
Valen's hands moved like confession, fingers dragging down the buttons of Elias's shirt with reverent slowness, parting fabric like secrets. His mouth followed, grazing over collarbones, over the curve of a trembling throat.
Elias gasped soft, real.
Not like Cassian.
Not like the others.
This wasn't about power.
This was about presence.
Valen kissed his chest like it meant something. Like he remembered what it was to ache. To crave with reverence, not hunger.
And when Elias arched toward him, gripping his shoulders like he might fall apart if he let go, Valen held him tighter.
Not to dominate.
To keep him together.
Their movements blurred between control and surrender who belonged to whom? Who led? Who followed?
None of it mattered.
Only the burn.
Only the wanting.
Only the quiet, desperate sound Elias made when he finally whispered "I believe you now."
And Valen kissed him like it was the last time he'd ever be forgiven for being what he was.
The room was too quiet afterward.
No breathless whimper. No frantic heartbeat. Just the hush that follows after something real has been torn open and neither knows how to close it again.
Valen didn't move.
Elias lay across him, half-draped over his chest, fingers still curled in the fabric of Valen's shirt as though afraid it might vanish if he let go.
And for once, Valen didn't vanish.
He simply sat there, one hand resting at the nape of Elias's neck, thumb moving in slow, absent strokes.
He didn't need to comfort.
But he wanted to.
That thought alone unmoored him.
It wasn't the physical intimacy. He had tasted bodies like wine for centuries. Had broken men and women on his tongue, fed on their longing like it was blood.
But this softness in the dark, this stillness?
It terrified him more than fire ever had.
Elias shifted slightly, pressing his face against the curve of Valen's throat. Not to kiss. Not to provoke. Just to be close.
Valen's jaw clenched.
He should've pulled away.
He should've stood up, disappeared, slipped back into the mask that had kept him untouchable for decades.
Instead, he whispered
"You weren't supposed to matter."
Elias didn't flinch. "I know."
Silence stretched again.
A different kind this time.
Valen looked down at the man in his arms and felt something old and dangerous begin to stir. Not hunger. Not lust.
Fear.
Because this warmth, this weight, this trust was something he couldn't consume, couldn't control.
And if he let it stay.
It would unravel everything.
"You should go back to your room" Valen said, quieter than before.
Elias didn't move.
"Do you want me to?" he asked.
Valen closed his eyes, jaw tight. "Yes."
A beat.
Then Elias pulled away. Not angrily. Not even disappointed.
Just slowly.
Like a man who understood the walls weren't ready to fall but had still gotten a glimpse of what lived behind them.
He rose, buttoned his shirt without looking at Valen. Picked up his satchel.
Paused at the door.
And said gently, almost kindly "You're not nearly as empty as you pretend to be."
Then he left.
The door shut with a sound that felt heavier than it should have.
And Valen sat in the dim quiet, still feeling the warmth of Elias's body against him, the echo of a heartbeat that wasn't his.
He didn't touch his wine.
He didn't summon anyone else.
He just sat there, staring into the fire, wondering when exactly Elias had become the one asking all the real questions and why the answers were starting to hurt.